Inbound Marketing | SEO http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co
Paul VeselySun, 14 Dec 2014 16:22:08 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.26Delete Google autocomplete negative resultshttp://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/12/14/delete-google-autocomplete-negative-results/
http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/12/14/delete-google-autocomplete-negative-results/#commentsSun, 14 Dec 2014 16:22:08 +0000http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/?p=649Google have had the autocomplete function working officially since 2008 but only in the past year has it gained traction and been released for the wider audience to use. There are many businesses and individuals that are affected by negative autocomplete results that wrongly associate their personal name or business name with negative connotations or keywords. The question I’d like to pose is – how do you remove or delete Google autocomplete negative results? How does Google decide what to show in the autocomplete results? The Google results page is split up to show a variety of different types of results when you type in a search term. These results are fed to the search engine results page (SERP) and displayed using different algorithms. Each algorithm has a different raison d’etre and hence is influenced by different factors. The most famous algorithm is the one that decides on results for the organic or natural search (purple) section which is most usually affected by proper SEO onpage and offpage optimization techniques. Another algorithm governs the results displayed for the Google AdWords (green) sections (aka PPC) which is paid advertisements. The algorithm that I will focus upon here is the one that decides on what results are shown in the drop-down when the searcher starts to type in a search query (red). These results are able to be clicked on to perform a search or ignored. The algorithm that decides on what results to show in the autocomplete area is majorly affected by tracking the number of searches many people make. The frequency of a search will help enter it into the autocomplete options. Geographic location also plays a role in deciding what autocomplete results are shown to each searcher. That means that the autocomplete results are localized. What can you do to remove or delete autocomplete negative results? There are Online Reputation Management (ORM) companies that perform such tasks successfully through use of a large number of workers to perform searches. These many searches based around one search term can eventually insert new autocomplete results which can push out the negative results. This technique is called flooding and is used by ORM companies to clear negative results from the organic (purple) search area as well as clear out negative results in the autocomplete area (red). Google displays a maximum of 10 autocomplete results for any one search term. But for less frequently searched terms, Google can display around 3-4 autocomplete results making the job of flooding quicker and easier. In mid 2014 Google changed their autocomplete algorithm to make it even harder to insert new results and hence have slowly stemmed the tide of everyday people having their results affected by a few rouge searches. This has made autocomplete results safer from being negatively affected for less searched for individuals and has also raised the bar for companies and professionals to change and influence their own results due to a larger critical mass being needed. You can check this critical mass by using Google trends to compare the competition of one search term to another and see if one search term has been changed by you successfully, then odds are that the other search term with a similar amount of searches will also be able to be changed. Of course Google’s algorithm ensures each search is from a different IP, the searches are spread over a relatively reasonable period of time (weeks to months) and the searcher, when they click on a result, actually interacts with the page and doesnt bounce instantly. This knocks out many basic crawlers that mimic human searches on Google and pretty much leaves you with crowd sourced options to be able to perform these searches. Much to the surprise of many experts in the industry, the autocomplete algorithm doesnt actually check for a large number of results indexed with the same search term to decide if the search should appear in the autocomplete area. There are many individuals and companies that suffer from misleading or negative autocomplete results and that want to get rid of these results. The best way to do this, is to use the services of a trusted ORM company to clean your reputation or company brand name and present you online in the way you deserve to be presented. Feel free to contact me to consult further. Conclusion You should remember that if you do have negative results in the autocomplete area of Google’s search showing up, there is a solution. You do not have to simply accept the defamation of your good name and reputation. The important factor to remember is that Google’s results environment is very dynamic hence never believe anyone who promises definite success. Instead – opt for a trial to see if someone can indeed add one result in the autocomplete area before paying for a full project. Also make sure you select a company who has experience in clearing negative autocomplete results because if they do it in an unnatural way – Google’s web spam team will be alerted and could manually freeze certain negative results making them more permanent. Wishing you a good reputation and lots of success!

]]>http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/12/14/delete-google-autocomplete-negative-results/feed/0Deep analysis of Panda 4.0 and how not to get penalizedhttp://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/06/09/deep-analysis-panda-4-0-get-penalized/
http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/06/09/deep-analysis-panda-4-0-get-penalized/#commentsMon, 09 Jun 2014 15:53:14 +0000http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/?p=934On the 19th May 2014 Matt Cutts officially confirmed what everyone in the online marketing industry was talking about – that Google had released a major algorithm change. Using forum chatter as a barometer, it was clear that this was a big change due to the amount of noise online and the number of posts about traffic changes, rankings increasing/decreasing and general traffic fluctuations to sites. This was all confirmed in Matt’s twitter post (see below) but the roll out happened even before that. Much to the frustration of the online community, Google have continued with their policy of officially saying there were major algorithm updates after they have been launched and without giving exact details of what the update entailed. Let’s remember that the first Panda update was launched back in February 2011 and ever since, there have sometimes been weekly minor tweaks and updates, but this is the fourth major update. So let’s perform a deep analysis of Panda 4.0 and see what was affected. Then, from that information, I will extrapolate how to ensure your site complies with the ever evolving goal posts that Google set for your site’s acceptable levels of optimization so that you don’t get penalized. I will particularly focus on text and other on-page optimization factors since that is what Panda focuses on. What does Panda 4.0 specifically look for? Panda is the part of the Google algorithm that focuses on on-page optimization. That means it checks if the content of your website is well written, relevant, unique, spelled correctly, and most of all engaging. Using different indicators such as time spent on page, bounce rates, spell checks and unique copy checkers, Google determines if your site passes its criteria. This most recent algorithm update called Panda 4.0 was aimed against sites and specifically pages within those sites with ‘thin content’. Thin content is when there is not a lot of text on the page and the page relies mainly on meta titles, page headings, and other multimedia such as pictures or videos on the page to be ranked highly. Sure there is a reason a user clicks on the SERP result and visits the page since it is really related to what they were searching for, but now Google have decided that these kinds of pages hold little value to the visitor due to their lack of substantial content on-page, hence they have seen a serious fall in rankings and hence traffic. Sounds a bit counter intuitive? So let’s analyze deeper who was hit and what is considered ‘thin content’. What was affected by Panda 4.0? Since there were a lot of articles about what sites were hit, I will briefly mention them here and link to the top articles for you to read further if you so wish. When news of the new Panda 4.0 algorithm was released, the first company that saw massive losses in traffic was eBay. This was widely reported. It is possible that not only do eBay product pages have ‘thin content’ but they are in direct competition with Google Shopping hence it’s in Google’s interests to hide eBay’s results so the potential consumer purchases the product on Google’s platform and profits are made by Google. There were other sites with the exact same issue such as yellowpages.com which also have many pages with very little content on each page, hence were hit with penalties. See the table below from Search Engine Land to see all the losers: You can also see all the winners who now have significant increases in traffic which includes comparison shopping sites, coupon sites, sites that have strong social sharing. Check out the full list by clicking here. Glassdoor.com >+100% Wikimedia.org > +100% Shopstyle.com >+250% Pay Day Loans is a highly competitive online industry and full of spamy marketers. Some say that it was a separate algorithm update but many sites were hit at the exact same time as the Panda 4.0 rollout. Press Release sites also saw a massive decrease in traffic. This was an interesting one, because generally speaking, they do not have thin content although much of the content is arguably not engaging. Still, Google determined that the sites do not produce or host quality content hence were penalized. The the visitor numbers graph below for PRweb.com: What can you do to optimize your site so it recovers or doesn’t get penalized in the future by Panda 4.0? Your focus should be to first identify if you have been positively or negatively affected by the algorithm change. Matt Cutts mentioned that the roll out of this new algorithm was the fastest ever, (within 10 days worldwide) hence you should start by checking your analytics data for the whole month of May 2014 to see if there were any peaks or sudden troughs in your visitor numbers. If you were hit, then locate the pages that have seen the largest drop in traffic and insert high quality, relevant content to increase engagement and time on page, plus insert improved navigation to decrease bounce rates from these pages. There is a similar remedy for those of you who have not been hit by the algorithm change but want to ensure your site will either seize this opportunity when your competitors have lost rankings or want to ensure future Panda 4.0 updates won’t negatively impact your site. In this case, you should go into the pages on your site which you feel have the least quality content and enhance the content to make it more engaging. On top of that, insert new content on any pages that you feel could possibly currently have thin content so as to beef it up and avoid getting penalized in a future minor update to Panda 4.0.that will no doubt be rolled out weekly. Lastly, if your strategy heavily relies on links from press release sites or getting traffic from press releases ranking highly, then utilize more traditional PR so as to get high quality links, traffic or even new clients from real press articles written about you in reputable news sources. In conclusion It seems Google are still strong believers in long, word filled texts on a page and even penalize sites that don’t have a lot of text that is also engaging. I for instance prefer less text (the irony isn’t lost on me with this long blog post), short bullets and multimedia such as infographics and pictures, yet these kinds of pages would be penalized by Panda 4.0. And if Google believe in something, they force everyone in the online community to adapt to their decisions or else we are hit with ranking penalties and even the punishment of being blacklisted. And what if your site didn’t see major drops or gains in traffic starting around mid May 2014? Don’t be fooled that you are in for clear sailing because if your site wasn’t hit now, it could be affected by future algorithm updates and changes……… which are inevitable (Mr Anderson).

]]>http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/06/09/deep-analysis-panda-4-0-get-penalized/feed/0Ten things you need to know about the EU’s decision on the ‘right to be forgotten’ on Googlehttp://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/06/02/ten-things-need-know-eus-decision-right-forgotten-google/
http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/06/02/ten-things-need-know-eus-decision-right-forgotten-google/#commentsMon, 02 Jun 2014 13:34:24 +0000http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/?p=917On Friday 30th May 2014 Google launched its webpage allowing European citizens to apply for specific results to be taken out of Google’s index. This shocking development to the case that stood before the EU court for many years called the ‘right to be forgotten’ has now entered its phase of implementation. If you want to fill out the simple and short online form for the search removal request under European Data Protection law – click here. Here is a list of the ten most important things you need to know about what happens when you ask Google to unindex certain results about your name: 1. The results must be ‘inadequate, irrelevant or excessive’ - Don’t bother filling in the webform if you want to remove information from Google’s indexed search results, but it doesn’t fall into the categories stated in the EU high court ruling. As Google’s legal team states: “A recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union found that certain users can ask search engines to remove results for queries that include their name where those results are inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed.” Although you can apply if your claim doesn’t fit within these categories for deletion, there is little chance that Google will in fact remove the unwanted results in the end, so it becomes a big waste of time for all parties involved. 2. Not all applications will eventuate in the removal of the result - Google’s legal advisory committee may decide against your request. As Google states: “To comply with the recent European court ruling, we’ve made a webform available for Europeans to request the removal of results from our search engine. The court’s ruling requires Google to make difficult judgments about an individual’s right to be forgotten and the public’s right to know. We’re creating an expert advisory committee to take a thorough look at these issues. We’ll also be working with data protection authorities and others as we implement this ruling.” 3. It probably won’t happen anytime soon - The most recent reports are that within one day of the webform being online Google already received a staggering 12,000 applications. Upon completing the webform, the applicant receives an automatic email stating “We have received your legal request. We are currently building our system for removing links from our search results according to EU data protection law. In the meantime, your message is in our queue. Once we have our system up and running, we’ll process your request as quickly as our workload permits.” This shows that your application is in a submission queue and there is no set deadline for a decision or action to be taken nor did the EU court ruling include such a stipulation. This suggests to me that certain cases could be drawn out for years. 4. You can only apply to Google if you are a European citizen - It is an EU court ruling that only affects EU citizens and an integral part of the form Google have asked applicants to fill out is a section to upload an identity document proving you are a European citizen. As Google states on the application form: “To prevent fraudulent removal requests from people impersonating others, trying to harm competitors, or improperly seeking to suppress legal information, we need to verify identity. Please attach a legible copy of a document that verifies your identity (or the identity of the person whom you are authorized to represent, as well as proof of your authorization). The document does not need to be a government-issued ID or passport. You may obscure parts of the document (e.g., numbers) as long as the remaining information identifies you. Google will use this information solely to help us authenticate your request and will delete the copy within a month of closing your removal request case except as required by law.” 5. Only applies to Google results pages within the EU - For all of you that want to remove results from Google searches outside of the EU, I’m sad to tell you that won’t happen. For all of those who are pro freedom of speech, then I am happy to tell you that Google is not legally bound, nor is it planning to remove the indexed results from any of its other geographic search engines outside of the EU. That means that if you successfully get Google to take down indexed results from Google.co.uk , those same results will still be accessible to people searching for your name in Google.com, Google.com.au etc. 6. Only individuals can apply - The EU ruling did not relate to companies wanting to clear unwanted results for their business, product or brand names. The ruling was based on a case set before the EU high court by Mario Costeja Gonzalez, who is a Spanish citizen and complained that a search of his personal name on Google showed a few old newspaper articles that he had sold some property that he owned to pay back a loan. Gonzalez claimed that these results were outdated and no longer relevant. 7. What if you have a few variations of your name - No one has made a clear policy of what happens if you are known by a number of names, nicknames alias’s etc. Each application can request the removal of as many results as you want, but for only one search term. That means if you are known as Fred Vesely, Freddy Vesely, Frederick Vesely and The Fredmeister Vesely and the unwanted results show up for all those search terms, it is unclear if you are expected to submit four applications or just accept that you can only remove the results from one of the search terms. 8. What will happen on other search engines - The ruling doesn’t include removing search results from Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, Baidu, Ask and other search engines yet it does set a legal precedent meaning that people could easily demand that these other search engines also take down specific results related to their name (as long as it was on similar grounds to the ruling against Google). Since the EU case was only against Google, the ruling subsequently only applies to Google. Even though Google is the major search engine in use throughout the EU, it doesn’t mean that other search engines will remove results or are legally inclined to do so. None of the other search companies have officially responded to the ruling or stated if they will have a response. That means that the unwanted search results could easily be found on other search engines and might increase their usage throughout the EU since they will have more holistic results. 9. The details will still be kept online - Even when you hear back from Google that you actually had your application accepted and the results were removed, they will still be kept in the internet archive www.chillingeffects.org which is a joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, etc law schools to “help users understand the protections that the First Amendment and intellectual property laws give to your online activities”. Visit the site for more of the incredible work this organization does for the protection of the rights of freedom of speech and its legal internet database of cases if cease and desist. 10. Google will state that results have been removed - Another thing that will make the victory of Google telling you that the unwanted results that you have requested taken down a little more sour is that at the bottom of any search page that has had results removed, the following message will appear: “In response to a complain we received, X number of results have been removed from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA request that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org” (see image below from Search Engine Land) . Yes that’s right, people will be able to trace things back and find out what you got removed possibly causing more damage to your reputation than if the result was simply left there amongst other results showing a more balanced view. So are you shocked at these ten interesting facts about the ‘right to be forgotten’ process now online via a Google webform? What’s your opinion about the whole process? Did I miss anything out that you wish to air? Feel free to comment below.

]]>http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/06/02/ten-things-need-know-eus-decision-right-forgotten-google/feed/2The death of the online reputation industry?http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/05/15/death-online-reputation-industry/
http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/05/15/death-online-reputation-industry/#commentsThu, 15 May 2014 20:04:59 +0000http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/?p=904A dramatic ruling was handed down by the European Union court a few days ago (on May 13th 2014) against Google. It was a ruling on the case called the ‘right to be forgotten’. The ruling was that Google MUST amend its search if anyone requests it, if there are results that show up that are either ‘outdated’ or ‘irrelevant’. Some have interpreted this ruling as the death of the online reputation management (ORM) industry which has made a business of pushing down unwanted (or negative) results for companies and individuals so they have a more positive reputation when being searched on Google. As someone who works in the ORM industry I can tell you that I don’t see the ruling as such a big deal for a number of reasons: It is only EU based, meaning that if a person or company have unwanted results in other geographic locations such as the US on Google.com, in Australia on Google.com.au etc, then this ruling wouldn’t bring about any change in those results. The ruling only relates to specific cases for individuals (not companies or brands) and only if they can prove the unwanted results are ‘irrelevant’ or ‘outdated’. Most ORM work is based around pushing down unwanted results that do not fall into these 2 categories. The terms ‘outdated’ and ‘irrelevant’ are very general and are open to a wide spectrum of interpretation. Who will decide what results do fall under this classification and does it mean that each request will go to court and play out over a number of years and be publicized in the media as has been with this case? Google will no doubt appeal this ruling and the court case for the final decision will drag out for a number of years before another verdict is handed down. Google’s current response to the verdict is surprise and anger but officially they have said the ruling was “disappointing”. It is unclear how Google will handle the flood of requests that are expected to pour in. this will further slowing down the implementation of this verdict. I imagine Google will have to build some kind of online request form and each request will have to be handled manually by a trained team of lawyers which does not seem like it will move quickly. There is no clear timeline forcing Google to implement the changes to the results pages within a certain amount of time from when the request was made by the individual. One of the most serious outcomes of the ruling is that it raises serious concerns for expression of free speech which means there is a high likelihood the verdict will be over turned or amended significantly to ensure individuals cant suppress what other choose to say and publish online. A bit about the case Mario Costeja Gonzalez, a Spaniard complained that a search of his personal name on Google displayed some newspaper articles from around 16 years ago when he sold properties he owned to pay back a debt. He claimed that these results were outdated and no longer relevant. Details from the EU court ruling The court’s ruling says that data that is “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed and in the light of the time that has elapsed”. I think you now see what my point number three above about the ruling being ambiguously termed. The fact of the matter is that these events did happen to Gonzalez. That’s why anti-censorship groups are screaming right now about this ruling. Interestingly, by making this legal case against Google, Gonzalez’s name and the incident is now splashed over the front pages of many search results pages, plus is in all the media. The only thing he did succeed in doing was to create more results about the properties he sold thus bringing it to even more people’s attention. So I’ll leave you with a clip of the sweet words of Alanis Morissette ‘Ironic’.

]]>http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/05/15/death-online-reputation-industry/feed/0How to become a publisher on LinkedInhttp://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/05/12/how-to-become-a-publisher-on-linkedin/
http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/05/12/how-to-become-a-publisher-on-linkedin/#commentsMon, 12 May 2014 21:29:11 +0000http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/?p=897LinkedIn have been offering very interesting and cool blogs published on their very own platform since mid 2012. The rollout of this new publishing/blogging platform on LinkedIn was also really well planned and implemented in my opinion. They got a bunch of influencers such as Richard Branson, Obama, Bill Gates etc (see all the amazing people you can follow on LinkedIn here) in every industry you could possibly conceive to write content (no limits on length) and publish it in their name on LinkedIn. Well, the big news at the start of February 2013 was that LinkedIn was opening its publishing platform to everyone (not just influencers). So how do you get your awesome content published on LinkedIn? Here are the very short and simple steps: Log into your LinkedIn account On the LinkedIn homepage click in the area where you would write a status See an editing icon (small pencil Edit ) on the right hand side Click on it and start writing your post for publication Its that easy. If you don’t have a small editing icon as stated in point 3 above, no need to despair, and no need to call your mother and cry, or even go on a month long rant about how much you hate the internet. Just lay off the copious amounts of coffee and follow these steps: Log into your LinkedIn account Click here to apply for early access to the publishing platform Fill in all the details needed including 2 online examples of your writing styles (ensure they are impressive) You will get this message: “Thank you for your interest. You will be notified when you are given access to post on the publishing platform.” Now don’t forget that this opportunity to publish on LinkedIn’s own publishing platform is newly opened to the public as per this techcrunch article hence the full roll out is expected to be slow to ensure stability and maintain quality of posts. A bit of History In April 2013 LinkedIn purchased Pulse which is an online newsreader. It cost LinkedIn a cool $90 million as reported and of course, when a company spends this kind of money, it has to be something strategic. Now the plan is becoming clearer with Pulse already integrated into the homepage newsfeed of LinkedIn showing posts published in the LinkedIn publishing platform by influencers. Pulse is expected to help push relevant content, not just by influencers but by the public, to the right people enabling LinkedIn to retain its image of being the best place for professional insights and knowledge. This adds to LinkedIn’s already strong ‘groups’ which have helped it gain this reputation thus far. Here are some impressive Pulse stats to see why LinkedIn made it such a juicy deal:

]]>http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/05/12/how-to-become-a-publisher-on-linkedin/feed/0Are Links Still Important for SEO?http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/03/18/links-still-important-seo/
http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/03/18/links-still-important-seo/#commentsTue, 18 Mar 2014 07:24:21 +0000http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/?p=886Many people ask me the same old question: Are links still important for SEO? Well don’t hear the answer from me, hear Matt Cutts, chief web spam fighting engineer and Google employee explain it for me. See the 2 videos below. In short, links are still a vital component that indicate and influence your sites rankings on Google for specific keywords. Even after all the algorithm updates in the past, and there will be more in the future, links are still central to optimizing a website and pushing it higher on SERPs. How to get links? Here a few short tips for you to build on to get back links, since its now clear how vital this is to your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Get in contact with anyone who has previously liked, shared or been in contact with you and request a backlink from them Research 3rd party sites or individuals who could possibly be interested in your product/service/website and request links Find influences on social media networks, pitch your product and ask for links Optimize your site to get clients to link, share etc Create onpage content that has a high likely hood of attracting links and shares Make it easy to link and share your pages – UX/Design Leverage any past business or personal connection to gain a link Guest blogging – no its not dead! Its still a great way to get links. Read this for tips of how to guest blog successfully. Finding mentions of you online where there is no link and request one

]]>http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/03/18/links-still-important-seo/feed/0Still paying for links?http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/02/27/still-paying-links/
http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/02/27/still-paying-links/#commentsThu, 27 Feb 2014 17:04:43 +0000http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/?p=878There has been an ongoing discussion in the SEO industry for years if paying for links is effective/strategic/acceptable. Lets battle it out here and see what each opinion says and then find a definitive path through the minefield of inbound links to your website. Using a case study along the way and reviewing different options, it will become clear where the industry is headed, but it doesn’t mean it’s the right direction for you. Guest blogging There has been a lot of intensive debate about the legitimacy of using guest blog posts to gain a link to your website. This blog covered closely the aggressive reaction of Matt Cutts to the issue in Mid November 2013. The bottom line of what Matt was saying is that he feels that the SEO community abused the idea of guest blogging and hence he was moving to make it unacceptable according to Google’s guidelines unless it was done in a very specific way. While webmasters are yet to see the implementation of Matt’s threats against links from guest blog posts, no doubt there will be an algorithm update shortly to enforce his views. If you do chose to continue to guest blog play by a few simple rules: Check if the blog is considered spammy Only get a single link back from the author area of the blog Only post on relevant blogs Use your own unique expert opinion within the post Black hat methods Anything from click jacking, to hacking and everywhere grey in between is included in this style of gaining inlinks. These practices normally show up within a week to around a month on Google’s web spam team’s radar and the sites are punished (usually manually). I have heard of situations of ‘being to big to punish’. This is where the sheer number of irrelevant spamy backlinks the webmaster is creating simply outbalances any punishment that Google slaps on the site. I have also seen sites use black hat linking techniques to rank highly for a week or two and then get punished (especially common in the payday loans industry), but the sheer profit generated from ranking highly for those few weeks makes the whole exercise worthwhile. Once the URL is burnt, the site is simply uploaded elsewhere and the same cycle happens again. How do you know if a site is using black hat inbound linking tactics to cheat the system? Look if the domain was just purchased (whois). Then check what opensiteexplorer says about their backlinks. If there is no data, then it shows it is a new site that hasn’t even entered into their compressive inlink database suggesting spamy techniques. If there is data, check if there are relevant sources for the links or if they simply have quantity and not quality. You can also check Majestic SEO to see their backlink acquisition over time. If it all happened at once, you can start to assume black hat tactics were involved. While I do not condone black hat SEO tactics, the truth is, they work (not necessarily for a long time) and hence they are included in this list although I suggest against using them. Quantity over Quality All the leading SEO guru’s have been chanting the same tune for years, saying that a quality link is better than many low level links from irrelevant or non-prominent sources. The question still remains about ROI. If you invest hours wooing one quality link from a major blog or an influential writer for example and that doesn’t come to fruition, wouldn’t it have been better to use older methods of gaining lots of links by sending out bulk emails and not wasting the time that you invested in build relationships to gain a non-existent link in the end? This debate is still raging within the industry and it is a personal choice of a webmaster what technique best suits their offpage optimization strategy. In the end, both paths can have their advantages and disadvantages so careful thought should go into the plan before setting out on a single path. Google user guidelines Google has long said that it does not intend to change its algorithms reliance on giving weight to the factor of linking one website to another. Just as in academic essays, each time a fact is mentioned; it is sourced and linked to the book and the author on the academic paper. Google uses this same indicator to decide what is relevant online. Social signals, sharing, time on page, plus clicks still don’t play as major role in determining rank as inbound links do. Google has not followed the path of other search engines such as Yandex (Russian) where social signals are extremely important for high rankings on the SERP. See this recent video of Matt Cutts discussing how Google will continue to rely heavily on inbound linking data in its search ranking factors and not use social signals. Manual spam action Cutts has said that while his army of spam fighting soldiers battle against spam on a regular basis every day, they constantly have to take manual action against certain sites (especially in industries such as porn, payday loans, pharmaceuticals, gaming and locksmiths) to ensure their SERP is kept clean of spamy sites. I loved this video of Cutts describing a regular day for a member of his web spam fighting team. The impression he left is that it is a real war going on online and Google don’t know where the attacks will come from, but they sure work hard to fight them off. Enjoy the video! Social/Viral links Google have said that social sharing is not a factor in their algorithm. There is usually a correlation between highly shared content and webpages that rank highly on Google’s SERP because both are signs of quality and relevant content. In the end, links from social media are not a ranking factor on the SERP, but do help your content to gain more exposure. Case study At the end of December 2013 Matt Cutts tweeted about SEOs bribing bloggers. For further information you can see this post on the Gawker. Here the writer Hamilton Nolan claims that an SEO company offered him money in return for creating links to a 3rd party website. This SEO company was clearly trying to buy links from the author, which is against Google’s guidelines but is very common practice. Nolan calls this practice “stealth marketing, and it’s designed to deceive both the employer and the reader. It’s an unethical scam.” Many have responded that it is standard practice that PR firms have asked journalists for decades to publish online positive press about their clients. What is the difference between doing this with PR companies in the past with printed press and doing this online? It seems it is just Google that doesn’t like it, but it is certainly not unethical in my point of view. In the end Google simply promotes its agenda and has decided this is not acceptable. This SEO company was burnt by Nolan, but many other SEO companies and webmasters are continuing to use this way of gaining inbound links and have been achieving success. This success has led to the practice continuing to be wide spread and since it is hard for Google to algorithmically track these transactions, they have been unable to stop link buying occurring. Conclusion You as a webmaster or SEO expert need to ask yourself: ‘Am I looking for short term gain or longevity?’ If your answer is longevity, then quality link building suits you. It allows for more stability and strategically it is much less risky, but it does take time. The time is usually involved in building relationships with the relevant webmasters so as to get quality inlinks. Reaching out to influencers with a unique proposition that will catch their attention and cause them to link to you is definitely challenging. In the end, creating excellent, engaging, unique content is the first step. As we have all heard a thousand times “content is king”, but all of you should note that the correct linking strategy is definitely queen. Without that, you could have a great piece of content that never ranks highly or gets seen. By combining these two steps, you will be assured a decent chance to rank highly on Google’s SERPs, grab a lot of relevant traffic and hopefully achieve your onpage goals. So what your opinion on inlinking and what works for you?

]]>http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/02/27/still-paying-links/feed/0Top 10 Google friendly guest blog posting tipshttp://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/01/21/top-10-google-friendly-guest-blog-posting-tips/
http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/01/21/top-10-google-friendly-guest-blog-posting-tips/#commentsTue, 21 Jan 2014 16:17:41 +0000http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/?p=865After Matt Cutts angry rant about guest blogging yesterday (January 20th 2014) that sent shock-waves through the industry, the question that all SEO’s, online marketers, inbound marketers and webmasters must ask themselves is ’How do I perform Google friendly guest blog posting?’. Here are my top 10 tips to ensure your blog posts are “Google friendly”: Only write and publish quality guest posts that add value to the reader No duplicate content The post must be on a relevant blog with the same theme/topic/industry as the site that is getting the backlink Don’t label your post as a guest post Guest post in moderation – don’t use guest posting as your only link source to your website Use blogs who don’t ‘sell links’ – this is easily noticed by looking at the side bar or footer and checking if there are irrelevant keyword rich anchor text links on the homepage. Another trick is to ask the webmaster to buy a paid link and if they make you an offer – don’t upload your guest post there Check for real social activity (and engagement in that activity) from real people on places like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ for a start. This is also a great way to get your guest post published if you can reach out to the webmaster via some of their active social media and engage them personally Ensure the site has visitor engagement – check comments on blog posts Check the quality of writing in other posts on the blog to and ensure that new posts are uploaded frequently Make the single link to your website from the author bio area and with non-spammy anchor text and have other links (both internal and external) come from within the body of the post I see guest blog posts as being in the grey area of SEO. It can be performed as a white-hat SEO method by simply putting up quality content with no intention to gain link juice from a certain blog, or it can be done in a very spammy way by paying for blogs to be uploaded with low quality content using anchor text rich hyperlinks so as to pass page rank from one irrelevant site to the destination site. The grey area is where most SEO’s find themselves, where the guest posts written are high quality and relevant to the blog but are still written with the explicit intention of passing page rank which is not allowed according to Google’s user guidelines. Google’s ridiculous rules (aka Google’s guidelines) have made it clear that guest blogging is not 100% clean SEO because SEO’s do utilize them for link juice and sometimes pay for posts. I believe that if you only use high quality relevant blogs and not pay for posts, then you are walking a fine line of doing guest posting clean enough and hence you fall within the grey area I am speaking about. Being within the grey area means that currently, Google will not punish your website. In the end, Google eventually succeeds in punishing the grey area and brings everyone back to the white or extreme black hat SEO techniques. Those are really the only two options. This is what Google has successfully done time and time again with its algorithm changes. A point of interest is that, in my opinion, Google can’t algorithmically punish guest blog posts that are created to ‘pass pagerank’ or ‘link juice’ that are placed on relevant and non spammy blogs. An algorithm won’t be able to tell if a blog post is quality and has no intention of passing pagerank if a few basic rules are followed. It is also important that the post was authored by a real (or fictitious) person that has an active Google+ profile since this is Google’s social layer which it uses to ‘know’ if people exist. This only leaves Google with the option to use manual actions to police and then dish out punishments for abuse of guest blog posting which would be performed by Matt Cutts own web spam team. Using a lot of employees to manually police the web isn’t financially viable for Google hence only extreme cases would get a manual punishment. I suggest for all SEOs perform quality control and to be picky before guest blogging. Plus don’t over use this linking option, it should be just one of the plethora of sources of links – which is what Google says is important. I know in the future guest blog posting may not be considered acceptable by Google, but it is still useful right now. I think Matt Cutts just got really, really pissed off at the email he got and hence vented on his blog sending shockwaves through the industry. Don’t jeopardize your results by being too clean when there is no need to be. The grey at the moment is fine and ensure you are not over using this technique in my opinion.

]]>http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/01/21/top-10-google-friendly-guest-blog-posting-tips/feed/0Finding a blog to upload a guest posthttp://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/01/03/finding-blog-upload-guest-post/
http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/01/03/finding-blog-upload-guest-post/#commentsFri, 03 Jan 2014 15:36:22 +0000http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/?p=859Your time is precious but finding the right places to guest blog is an invaluable skill. Here are my short suggestions in how to find the best place to guest blog. Steps for finding a place to guest blog: 1) First search for a blog that suits your website’s industry. You can search for only ‘blogs’ on the Google advanced search or Do a normal search using industry keywords together with “guest post,” “submit a guest post,” “accepting guest posts,” or something along those lines. 2) Then decide if the blog is quality: PageRank, number of outbound links per page, any section selling links is bad, design, quality of other posts etc 3) Then finally send a short email to the webmaster (initially without the text just explaining it) or connect via social media and ask the webmaster if they want a post by you 4) Once accepted, send the webmaster the full article and ensure it is uploaded live and follow hyperlinks are included with the correct anchor text online You could always use an online list of places to guest blog originally posted by MOZ: MyBlogGuest Buzz Bloggert GuestBlogIt BloggerLinkUp BlogSynergy Guest Blog Genius Guestr BlogDash PostJoint Copy for Bylines Guest Blogging Websites Fizz Niche Technorati’s directory of blogs Alltop Google Blogsearch Best of the Web Blogs On Top List blog directory

]]>http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2014/01/03/finding-blog-upload-guest-post/feed/0How to change a Google Knowledge Graph entryhttp://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2013/12/20/change-google-knowledge-graph-entry/
http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/2013/12/20/change-google-knowledge-graph-entry/#commentsFri, 20 Dec 2013 09:29:42 +0000http://www.searchengineoptimizations.co/?p=848 How to change a Google Knowledge Graph entry Google knowledge graph results are set in the top right hand corner of the search page which makes them one of the first things the eye sees on a SERP (search engine results page). The clean design with a picture, large spacing, bolded topic headings and a box around the information all help to draw the attention of the eye to this area of the results page. For these reasons, Google Knowledge Graph results greatly affect the online reputation of a brand or person. So how can one change a Google Knowledge Graph entry? Google bought ‘Metaweb’, an American software company, in 2010 that aggregated data from across the internet and organized it using a smart way of categorizing data about individuals, companies or things (they call entities) which is called Freebase. The Freebase scrapper had gathered information (using schema language to structure the data) on over 570 million of the most searched for entities across the web. By updating and changing information within Freebase, you can control what is fed to Google and displayed in the Google Knowledge Graph area. What kind of information can you control? This is what’s so cool about freebase: you can control not just the information presented in Google Knowledge Graph but also the direct answers Google gives to some questions which it displays at the top of the SERP such as: What date is John Smith born? Where did John Smith go to school? Where does John Smith live? The list is scary and long: parents, siblings, children, ethnicity, religion, weight, height etc……. The list goes on for other types of entities such as companies, locations, or things. Where is most information pulled from? Most information displayed on Google Knowledge Graph and found within Freebase is pulled from ‘trusted sources’. This is generally places such as your Google+ profile and Wikipedia entries. These sources should be updated first to ensure all relevant information is up-to-date and correct before changing anything on Freebase. How to change information on freebase? My first point is DO NOT ABUSE THIS INFORMATION of how to change an entry on Freebase. I expect readers of this blog to truly add value to freebase and add relevant and truthful information. Be a good Freebase community citizen! Freebase uses schema markup language to categorize results for each entity. A community of users add, edit and change things much like Wikipedia. Google is a strong believer in the power of having open resources and a community of trusted volunteers to ensure data quality. The reason why Google place Wikipedia at the top of nearly every search result is because they believe that this open style of editing ensures data quality and gives the best information to the user. This is why they have kept the same model running for Freebase. This also means regular people like you and me can create an account in Freebase and start to change details about entities so that the changes eventually flow through to the Knowledge Graph area. Of course, the more of a trusted user you are in Freebase with a history of quality, truthful and useful changes (called gaining providence), then your changes will ‘stick’ and also flow through to the knowledge base faster. Let’s use my profiles I created in Freebase as an example: Paul Vesely person: – https://www.freebase.com/m/0ztn_65 Base account for Paul Vesely: – https://www.freebase.com/base/paulvesely Notes for Reference. Here is the terribly unclear Freebase explanation of how to set up a user profile: http://wiki.freebase.com/wiki/User_profile Disclaimer: Freebase is not a user friendly system. It has very poor UI/UX and its help areas are complex with few clear answers. This is why I have simplified the process of becoming a user below. Steps to create a Freebase profile: Add new account: Go to: http://www.freebase.com/ Sign up (top right hand corner) Best to sign in using your Google account Add yourself as a person: Click the Gear icon in the top-right corner Choose Add Topic https://www.freebase.com/people/person The name of the topic would be your First and Last Name Then add whatever public information you want to be openly available on that page (filling in the properties with the yellow down-down arrows on the left hand side of the property name. Note: the dropdown arrows are not visible until you rollover them with your mouse) Start to add/edit/update/correct other entities on the Freebase Currently no images but can be uploaded but nearly all the other information can be edited The future for Google Knowledge Graph entries As part of Google’s stated strategic direction, they wish to truly understand the user and understand what they are searching for and supply them with the exact answer they are looking for. Google, using the data in freebase and displaying it in the Knowledge Graph is trying to do just that. The most recent algorithm change called hummingbird was made in order to understand what you are searching for in an effort to supply better quality and more personalized results. Another online trend that Google is riding is the need to supply answers from the internet without a SERP. Devices like cellphone using systems such as Siri need to give results from the internet to users without showing them a SERP. Ditto for Google Glass – where there is no room for a whole SERP, just a single and correct result displayed to the user. This all means that strategically, the information located in Freebase will grow in importance to Google and be fed to users exponentially. It’s time to get involved right now, at the ground floor, before it gets too hard to join the community and become a member of Freebase with providence. A big thank you to Andrew Isidoro for his great post on MOZ